Factions

Three forces rose from the ashes of this region. The war between them is over, and none of the three came out of it as the thing it had been.

The archive keeps closed records alongside open ones. A faction that has been destroyed is not deleted. Its holdings, doctrine and failures remain on file, because the Wasteland has a habit of repeating what it has already buried once.

Currently in the field

• Active, in occupation

  The Remnants

  Order through strength. Survival through control. A disciplined military force holding Iron Haven and the trade that runs through it.

• Active

  The Scattered

  Hope survives where freedom remains. Survivors of two destroyed factions, outnumbered and under-equipped, fighting to still be there afterwards.

• Active, unaffiliated

  Mercenaries

  Loyalty can always be bought. Independent operators working for the highest bidder, hired by both sides and trusted by neither.

Other bodies on file

Not among the forces that divided this region, and not filed with them.

• Reported at Caernarfon

  RENED

  A Crown department that by its own account officially never existed, now said to be investigating what happened to the country. Every source on file is its own.

Closed records

• Destroyed

  The Settlers

  Keepers of what remains. Built Iron Haven, won the war, and had nothing left afterwards to hold it with.

• Destroyed

  The Scavengers

  Nothing is useless. Owned an economy that required competing buyers, and did not survive the arrival of a single one.

How the ashes divided

The world did not end all at once. It cracked: grids first, then water, then the three days the skies burned. What survived here was farmland, industrial yards and small villages that escaped the worst of it, and that made this region valuable. Too valuable to stay peaceful.

Three answers emerged to the same question. Hold what is left. Take what is needed. Trade what everyone else discards.

The first answer won the war and was destroyed by it. The third was destroyed by the peace that followed. The second holds Iron Haven, and will not say who gives it its orders.

Where things stand

Victory came at a cost. The Settlers claimed the battlefield; Iron Haven passed to the Remnants regardless, and the last true bastion of civilisation is now a checkpoint, a tax and a question.

Outside the walls, what is left of both destroyed factions has united under a new name. The Scattered fight not for victory but for survival. As a sickness moves through the region and word spreads of those who return changed, survival is no longer a modest ambition.

Archive notes

• Bullets became currency. Water became power. Scrap became life.
• Two of the three founding factions were destroyed within the same war. Both records remain open to inspection and closed to amendment.
• Iron Haven still stands. Who holds it and who commands it are two separate questions, and only one of them has an answer.